


What we do (to and for each other).

by GhostOfDorothyStreet



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: M/M, Vampires, and their usual grab bag of thematic whatever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-07
Updated: 2017-11-07
Packaged: 2019-01-30 21:17:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12661605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GhostOfDorothyStreet/pseuds/GhostOfDorothyStreet
Summary: Something's up with Jim...(a belated Halloween snapshot...)





	What we do (to and for each other).

It takes a long time for anyone to notice. If pushed they might have observed that Jim looked tired, paler and more drawn around the eyes, the mouth.

But Gotham does that to a person.

It’s Harvey who eventually catches on to there being something more going on. As it would be. Jim’s attempts to push him away, to play it all off as some lost sleep, work stress, the usual worries, those are as indicative as anything else.

There’s pale and there’s deathly pale. There’s keeping your head down after a night on the town, and visibly recoiling from the light.

The blood spots on his collar are the last straw.

"You know you can tell me anything, right?"

"There’s nothing to tell."

"Like hell there isn’t. You’re scaring the crap out of me, Jim…"

"Just drop it, Harvey, alright."

It’s not a request, and it brokers no argument.

 

***

 

No one has seen Jim by daylight in a while.

And when he is seen outside of work, it’s always in the same place.

No one is sure what business he has at the Iceberg Lounge, after hours at that.

But then no one has seen Penguin much lately either.

 

***

 

"I can’t keep doing this."

"You don’t mean that."

"People are noticing."

"Whatever they suspect, I assure you, none of them are perceptive enough to guess the truth."

A glass cracks in a closed fist.

"That’s not the point! I... I can’t keep hurting you like this."

Oswald stands, plucks the glass from Jim’s hand and sets it on the table.

"The only person you’re going to hurt is yourself," his tone is snappish, perhaps more upset by the cracked glassware than anything else Jim has done. His fingers drift to the side of his own neck, to a patch of gauze, which he carefully peels back. "I knew what I was getting myself in for."

Jim shifts uncomfortably, pushing himself back against his chair so as not to surge forwards. He licks his lips, his mouth watering.

His fingers twitch, his breath catches in his throat. He hears – perhaps imagines – a pulse that isn’t his own thrumming in his ears…

He’d done so well for years, but now the hunger was back stronger than it had ever been. An itch under his skin, a gnawing in his gut. It drags him back here every night even as his silent heart swims in guilt.

Oswald had figured him out, seen right through to the core of him, even when he’d been on the wagon for years. Folk stories from his mother had taught him what to look for, how to spot the signs.

He’d asked for this. He’d offered.

Whose fault did that make it?

Elegant hands, that are paler than they were a few short months ago, grip the arm rests of Jim’s chair. He’s so close now, too close to resist.

"If you were really so very worried, you would let me join you."

Jim freezes, his mouth inches from Oswald’s neck.

It’s not the first time he’s asked. He’s been asking since the beginning.

But however much what they’re doing tears him up, knowing he’s literally slowly draining the life from a living person, no matter who that person is... especially because of who that person is...

Oswald is a lot of things, but they both know which of them is really the monster.

Jim knows that making another like him would be crossing an invisible line, in his mind, in his heart...

There would be no going back from it.

No matter how much some secret part of him wants that.

"No. I can’t. Not..."

He cuts himself off, and as he buries his face against Oswald’s neck, feels warmth against his cold skin and tastes iron and salt and sweetness, he hears a fondly exasperated note in the sigh that escapes his willing victim.

Not _now_. Not _yet_. But someday.

It’s inevitable.


End file.
